


What Has Long Escaped Us

by candiedrobot



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Don't piss off a winter spirit, Jack has a dark side, M/M, Pitch is a stalker, References to historical violence, World War II, but is not dark!Jack
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:14:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candiedrobot/pseuds/candiedrobot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He didn't yet know that the boy with the unusually white hair and perpetually bare feet, the young man staring forlornly at the gaggle of sickly, gaunt children like he was a broken thing himself, went by the name of Jack Frost; or that this chance encounter was the beginning of something important- a turning point in the desolate and dreary road that was his solitary life thus far, but he knew that he had found a kindred spirit that day.  And he felt, somewhere deep in the roiling mass of darkness within himself, that this would not be the last time they crossed paths. "</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Has Long Escaped Us

The Nightmare King's favourite moments in the lives of humans were those right before a war. When tensions were high, fear thrilled through the air, and the people became suspicious of their own neighbours, brothers, mothers- These were times when Pitch Black was at his strongest, high off the exquisite terror that creeped and crawled beneath people's skins.  Now, this was not to say that Pitch was a fan of war. In fact, he despised it. War was tacky, and messy, and while fear was a constant, making it easy for him to remain strong and well-fed, it was the kind of full one feels from eating rancid meat, or molded bread. The taste was foul and left his stomache churning.

 **** No, the second the first blow was struck, the first bomb dropped or the first shot fired, Pitch took his leave, usually making for the other side of the globe, as far away as he could get from starving children, hopeless mothers and fathers and boys, full to the brim with fear but numb to it as they stepped into the line of fire anyways- all those lives wasted for a game of pawns between those humans with power. He detested it. Fear was meaningful. It was important. It taught humans how to survive, how to avoid the things that they were frightened of, because those were the things that could hurt them- kill them. There was nothing Pitch hated more than a field full of men, with swords or guns or cannons, it never mattered which, all colliding into each other and falling (almost willingly, it seemed) into sharp points and smoking bullets. It made him feel weak, even as he drank in the terror, because it _meant nothing_. The fear wasn't enough to teach them anything, and he had never felt more useless or less believed in.  No one cared about the boogeyman when there were enemies at your door. So Pitch ran.

 **** But then came the wars from which he couldn't run. The world wars. They came creeping up like ivy, covering the world in a panic and expectancy, a sharp fear of the unknown, and Pitch was so drunk off the anticipation that the sudden escalation into all-out war startled him. Quite suddenly, it seemed, all of Europe was stinking with death and that _wrong wrong wrong_ kind of fear that settled in his gut and churned, until he wanted to crawl out of his bones, scratch at his skin and shake these misguided humans until they knew who to fear again, who to tremble before and who to count on to keep them out of stinking, smoking fields of bones.

 **** But all he could do was watch, creep into the minds of soldiers and influence them, through hellish nightmares that only just surpassed what they had witnessed first-hand in battle, encourage them to desert. Encourage young men to flee their country, hide from the draft. It was all he could do, but it was never enough.

 **** Steadily, through the riot and shamble of what should have been the only world war, but instead turned out to simply be the _first_ ; time, as it is wont to do, trickled by.

 **** It wasn't until the middle of World War Two that Pitch Black saw Jack Frost for the first time. He was sitting in of one of those infernal concentration camps, hugging his knees on the cold ground and watching a group of children huddled together. At first, Pitch thought that he was just another young jew, or gypsy, or one of the other particulars who were being hunted down like prey, due to his bare feet and oh so pale colouration. It wasn't until a nazi soldier, a guard of some sort probably walking his rounds, strolled by and _passed right through him_.

 ****_Oh_ , Pitch had realised, taking a sudden, new interest in the scene before him, _this one's not human at all_.  He didn't yet know that the boy with the unusually white hair and perpetually bare feet, the young man staring forlornly at the gaggle of sickly, gaunt children like he was a broken thing himself, went by the name of Jack Frost; or that this chance encounter was the beginning of something important- a turning point in the desolate and dreary road that was his solitary life thus far, but he knew that he had found a kindred spirit that day. And he felt, somewhere deep in the roiling mass of darkness within himself, that this would not be the last time they crossed paths.  

He never went over there to sit with Jack, and it wasn't until one of the children sneezed and rubbed her frail, tiny little arms that Jack himself got up to leave, catching a trail of cold wind and vanishing before Pitch could figure out that the boy's prescence could bring nothing but ice and frost and even more pain to these souls already so close to death.

A doctor came through the next day and took the girl away.  Pitch never saw her again.  But he saw the doctor, if one could call him that, and many more like him come and go.  He saw experiments, and gas chambers, and ovens and death, _death and sorrow and reeking, stinking certainty_.  As the war progressed and the camps grew, life expectancies dwindled down to mere hours.  There was something far more sinister and loathsome in the minds of men than he could ever weave into a simple nightmare.

It wasn’t much better anywhere else, he discovered.  War and domination, torture and malice, these poisons trickled out into the far reaches of the globe.  Some thought these were the end of days.

He was following a group of German soldiers on an invading trek into the U.S.S.R. when he saw Frost again.  Pitch had been digging into the soldier’s minds, inundating their dreams with vengeful ghosts, gunfire and families that wouldn’t be there to welcome them back home.  He picked at their fears and dragged everything he could find to the surface in an onslaught of nightly terror.  It wasn’t much, but he appreciated the haunted looks on their faces as they journeyed on.  Slowly, the weather became colder, more biting, winds freezing sweaty socks in boots and blizzards whipping against frost-bitten faces.  The soldiers started to die.  Hypothermia swept through the ranks like it was a disease, and equipment began to malfunction.  They were in Russia, so much of this stood to reason, but somehow, something seemed... off- different.  The wind had a living quality, the snow appeared to pour down in a suffocating blanket that seemed conscious somehow, breathing, and choking and gasping and holding its victims in a vice grip.

 **** Hidden away in the top of a tree, Pitch watched the blizzard from a new angle, his suspicions confirmed.  The sprite from before, the boy with the sad eyes and the snow-white hair hovered there, in the midst of swirling cold, staff in hand and a dead, frozen look in those oh-so emotive eyes.  He concocted the blizzard like it was a symphony, a lethal orchestra of ice and wind and vindication.  He felt crushing sympathy for the boy in that instant.  They were two of a kind- both instruments of forces which could do nothing but hurt here, in this miserable time of agony, and if they couldn’t protect, then they would punish.  They would follow the evil of the world, and submerge it in a world of cold and dark, and terror and ice.  And one day, Pitch thought to himself, they would meet properly, and they would do great things together, this spirit and himself.  He shivered, not from the cold, but from the sight of such a wanton display of power and fury.  Frost sprite or not, a white-hot flame burned inside the boy, and that day, an ember lit inside the Nightmare King as well.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! This is officially my first work on Ao3, though I will likely be switching the rest of my fics over here from FF.net. I'm so proud to contribute to the growing BlackIce community here, even if it's with this rather sombre piece.


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